8 Comments

When building a house, rich people used to show off their wealth by using a large amount of small bricks rather than a small amount of large bricks. Using small bricks was more labour-intensive and thus more expensive. Also, combining small bricks and large bricks allowed for somewhat elaborate patterns.

If you go back as far as the Middle Ages, building a stone house in the first place as opposed to a timbered house was a sign of immense wealth.

In the province of Noord-Brabant (usually called Brabant), they tend to use kei with all mentioned compound adjectives. In the rest of the country (and in Belgium as well I guess) they use the ones listed here and only use kei together with hard.

BTW I've never heard of the use schreeuwlelijk as a synonym of spuuglelijk only de schreeuwlelijk somebody with a big mouth/shouting a lot.